Michigan Ban on Gay Marriage Recognition Struck Down

It’s another victory for unions
in Michigan. A federal judge has struck down the state’s ban on
same-sex marriage recognition, meaning gay couples can form a union
of two people legally acknowledged by the government. Get it? Get
it? Because, you know, “unions”?

Sorry.

Anyway, it’s getting harder to write these kinds of posts
without just taking an old one and replacing the state. U.S.
District Judge Bernard Friedman, after a two-week trial, has
declared that
Michigan’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage recognition is
unconstitutional.

The trial revolved around whether the state had any legitimate
interest in banning same-sex marriage recognition, which meant
experts were trotted out to talk about studies about parenting and
children to fight out this debate over who raises children best.
No, I don’t believe anybody argued that even if heterosexuals were
better parents, it doesn’t justify government involvement. The
judge does note in his ruling, though, that the state is not
permitted to evaluate the parenting abilities of heterosexual
couples before granting them licenses:

Even today, the State of Michigan does not make fertility or the
desire to have children a prerequisite for obtaining a marriage
license. As defendant Lisa Brown testified, Michigan county clerks
are not authorized to consider a couple’s stability, criminal
record, ability to procreate, parenting skills, or the potential
future outcomes of their children before issuing a marriage
license. … County clerks may only evaluate the age and residency
of the license applicants and whether either of the applicants is
currently married.

Controversial sociologist Mark Regnerus (whom I’ve written about

here) was brought in to trot out his problematic study to argue
that heterosexual parents were better. The judge took a dim view of
the study and questioned Regnerus’ impartiality:

While Regnerus maintained that the funding source did not affect
his impartiality as a researcher, the Court finds this testimony
unbelievable. The funder clearly wanted a certain result, and
Regnerus obliged. Additionally, the NFSS is flawed on its face, as
it purported to study “a large, random sample of American young
adults (ages 18-39) who were raised in different types of family
arrangements” (emphasis added), but in fact it did not study this
at all, as Regnerus equated being raised by a same-sex couple with
having ever lived with a parent who had a “romantic relationship
with someone of the same sex” for any length of time. Whatever
Regnerus may have found in this “study,” he certainly cannot
purport to have undertaken a scholarly research effort to compare
the outcomes of children raised by same-sex couples with those of
children raised by heterosexual couples. It is no wonder that the
NFSS has been widely and severely criticized by other scholars, and
that Regnerus’s own sociology department at the University of Texas
has distanced itself from the NFSS in particular and Dr. Regnerus’s
views in general and reaffirmed the aforementioned APA position
statement.

The judge concluded that the ban on same-sex marriage does
advance any legitimate state interest and is discriminatory. He
declared the ban unconstitutional and enjoined the state from
enforcing it. You can read the ruling
here (pdf).

It’s not clear yet whether this means gay marriages will be able
to begin immediately, though the judge does not appear to have put
a stay on his own ruling like has happened in other states.